This invention relates to a method and an apparatus for controlling a time-sharing computer system and a computer system to which instructions are given through commands.
In a time-sharing system (hereinafter, referred to as a TSS) of a computer, good human-interface is required. It is required that the work-efficiency of the workers who use the TSS terminals be as high as possible and that the workers be able to work with a comfortable man-machine interface.
In conventional general purpose large computer systems, in order to raise the processing efficiency of the computer system, the system control is performed on the basis of the operating system (computer control program) by regarding the computer hardware as the main resource, rather than the brains, eyes, and hands of the workers. Therefore, in the work of a TSS in which the work-efficiency of the workers is significant, there may be a case where the workers must wait for the operation of the computer, so that there is a problem in that the work efficiency cannot be improved as desired.
In text editing, which is a typical job to be executed by the TSS, there are many simple jobs, such as a data processing in which, for example, the source program is inputted one character at a time from a terminal to a TSS file, and a series of characters in a file is replaced by another series of characters, or the like. Even such simple processings, if the processings are simultaneously required by many TSS terminal users, causes the ability of a large computer to be used so-called minutely, so that the great computing power that is peculiar to large computers is not sufficiently utilized and there may be a case where the response to TSS commands becomes slow.
In addition, the easiness of operations involving files is important in the TSS. In the operating system of the general purpose large computer which has to cope with various duties, such as business calculations, scientific calculations, on-line system tasks, etc., the more complicated and various file constructions must be supported to meet the requirements for high-speed processing, easiness of constitution of the user system, or the like. This adversely results in deterioration of the easiness of operations involving files in the TSS.
These problems occur since there is always an inconsistency between the software architecture which gives priority to the processing efficiency of a computer and the software architecture which gives priority to the work efficiency of the workers. It is impossible to solve all of such problem in a single computer system.
To solve such problems, an idea a system of the function distribution type has been proposed in which a computer system which can make the most of the great data processing ability of the large computer is used as a host system, and a computer system which is suitable for the TSS of which the text processing and man-machine control processing are done efficiently is used as a terminal system.
As a conventional system of this kind, the following methods are available.
(1) Remote batch coupling method
In this method, the terminal computer used only for the TSS and the large host computer used mainly for batch processing are connected through a communication line; the work which requires the interaction with a man, such as text editing, data preparation, etc., is executed using the TSS of the terminal computer; when the great computing ability of the large computer is needed, the program and data are sent to the host computer by the remote job entry system for allowing the host computer to carry out the batch processing, and the execution result is again returned to the terminal computer side, whereby the result may be observed and checked by the workers at the TSS terminals.
This method has an advantage in that the human work-efficiency can be raised since the operating system only for use of the TSS which gives priority to the human-interface is used as the terminal computer.
However, this method has a problem in that the large host computer cannot be used interactively. Namely, the host computer cannot be used in the interactive mode by means of the TSS terminal of the terminal computer. Therefore, the interactive software to be executed by the host computer, such as, e.g. the interactive debugger cannot be used by the TSS terminal of the terminal computer. Furthermore, there is also a problem in that it is impossible to access the data base of the host computer systems by interaction from the TSS terminal.
(2) Transparent host TSS method
In this method, the host computer and the terminal computer are connected through the TSS line, and by changing over the mode, the TSS of the host computer and the TSS of the terminal computer can be individually used by one TSS terminal connected to the terminal computer, respectively. That is, while the TSS of the terminal computer is being used, when a particular TSS command is inputted, the mode enters the host command input mode, so that the command inputted from the TSS terminal is directly sent to the host computer, where it is executed. The execution result of the host computer is outputted to the TSS terminal of the terminal computer. Inputting another particular command now allows the mode to again return to the command input mode of the TSS of the terminal computer.
Instead of the above method whereby the modes of the host computer TSS and the terminal computer TSS are switched over by inputting a particular command, another method is also available, whereby when a particular symbol is added to the head of the TSS command, this command is executed as a command of the terminal computer TSS, and when no particular symbol is added, that command is sent to the host computer for permitting the TSS of the host computer to execute it.
Even when either of these methods is adopted, problems result, in that, although the host computer can be used interactively, the host computer TSS and the terminal TSS require different interactive languages, and both systems can be merely individually used, or the like, so that the method of utilizing both TSS commands by combining them is impossible. In addition, there is also a problem in that the handling is complicated since the method of the host computer TSS and that of the terminal computer TSS are different.
(3) Intelligent TSS terminal method
As a method of distributing the processings by the host computer to the terminal side, a method is known whereby the intelligent terminal, microcomputer, and personal computer are used as the TSS terminal and part of the processings, such as text editing and the like, is completely locally carried out by the TSS terminal. This method is fundamentally identical to the method (2) although the hardware construction is slightly different from that of the above-mentioned method (2). That is to say, in this method, the mode in which the host computer is used and the mode in which the microcomputer equipped in the TSS terminal is used are separated, and both of them are individually used in the interactive mode, respectively. Therefore, the same problems occur as in the method (2).